This week the Star Clipper bloggers are writing about their favorite betrayals in comics. The first betrayal that comes to my mind was when Colossus left the X-Men to join Magneto. This was literally a jaw-dropping moment in my comic-reading life. Colossus joined ranks with Magneto in “Uncanny X-Men” #304 in September of 1993 during the “Fatal Attractions” crossover.

I was ten-years-old when this issue came out. Though I read comics at the time, my main point of reference with X-Men was the “X-Men Animated Series.” If a character in the comic wasn’t on the main team in the cartoon (Cyclops, Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, Gambit, Jubilee, Beast, Jean Grey, and Professor X) I simply just didn’t think that character was as cool, with the exception of maybe Nightcrawler, Bishop, and Cable. Not only had Colossus not made his cameo debut on the X-Men cartoon (It happened a month later in November of 1993) to give me any point of reference of who his character was, but in the comic he was almost randomly leaving the X-Men to join their sworn enemy Magneto. This absolutely made me hate Colossus in 1993. I distinctly remember sitting around with my comic-reading buddies and talking about how bad a guy Colossus was after reading “Uncanny X-Men” #304.

In retrospect, I actually really like Colossus now. I’ve since gone back and read Chris Claremont’s legendary 70s X-Men run, where Colossus is one of the quintessential team members, and loved it. His relationship with Kitty Pryde is a great comic book romance (Particularly in Joss Whedon’s “Astonishing X-Men”) and it’s always exciting when he teams up with Wolverine for a “Fastball Special.” Even looking back on the issue when he joins Magneto, I think it’s almost silly how up-in-arms I was over Colossus’ betrayal of the X-Men. Had I been reading X-Men for a little longer, I likely would have been more upset over the ludicrous writing in the issue that causes Colossus to leave the team. Basically, during a fight with Magneto and the Acolytes, Colossus decides it’s Professor X’s fault that his sister Illyana died from the legacy virus. He then goes on to give up Xaiver’s pacifist dream of human-mutant coexistence and figures what better time then now is their to join with a mutant terrorist that he’d been fighting for the last 15 years. His decision was that quick and random, and by the end of the issue Colossus departs with Magneto much to my dismay. Now I have a harder time with the slapdash writing, but for a time in 1993 Colossus’ betrayal to the X-Men was absolutely unforgivable to me.

-Jon

When it comes to writing comics, a well timed back-stab is akin to a work of art. One minute two characters are getting along perfectly, the next one of them is lying dead on the ground with an ice pick in their neck while the other smiles like a loon. That’s why as a fun project I decided to write about my favorite comic book betrayal.

When you look at the long and dramatic history of comics, there are a lot of betrayals to choose from. Just looking at comics since the nineties, there are events like Bishop going rogue and trying to kill Cable and baby Hope, Batman betraying the JLA by devising strategies against them (in case they ever turned evil), and the infamous Onslaught epic where Xavier went insane and nearly decimated the entire Marvel Universe…and those are just the highlights.

In my opinion however, the best betrayals aren’t driven by jealously, greed, or even hatred. The best betrayals come from characters who believe their actions are not only justified, but in some twisted way are for the benefit of others. One of my all time favorite betrayals was written by Greg Pak in his modern classic, Planet Hulk and World War Hulk. This epic story both starts and ends with a major betrayal from people that the Hulk thought he could trust.

The first was a betrayal born out of high-minded selflessness and orchestrated by one of my favorite Marvel creations in recent years, the Illuminati. For anyone who doesn’t already know, the Illuminati are a secret organization that guides events in the Marvel Universe, led by some of the most influential and important people in said Universe. This group includes Namor, Professor Xavier, Doctor Strange, Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and Black Bolt. In their unshakable belief that they know better than everyone else, they instigated the most recent Skrull invasion, consolidated the Infinity Gems where anyone could find them, and of course launched the Hulk into space.

Like many ventures of the Illuminati, this plan didn’t work out the way they expected to. This shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise to them, considering most of them, in their own lives, have always had questionable judgment. Tony Stark had his alcoholism, Reed his failed rocket experiment that gave the FF their powers, and Black Bolt in ever trusting his brother Maximus the Mad (seriously, look at the name!). Nevertheless they decided that for the good of all, they needed to exile the Hulk to a desolate planet and assured themselves that nothing could go wrong. There’s an old saying that applies here, and that’s that no good plan survives contact with the enemy. Suffice to say, Murphy’s Law went into full effect from there, and from that little gem of a decision we got Planet Hulk.

As pissed as the Hulk was about that, he found a way to make the best of a bad situation. Within a few months he was king of a new empire, was adored by an entire world, and had a beautiful new queen…then betrayal number two happened.

For me the best part of the second betrayal was that I never saw it coming, and neither did the Hulk for that matter. The giant alien insect, Miek, driven mad by hatred and loss, destroyed half of his own planet and blamed it on the Illuminati just so the Hulk would join him in his rage. If anything, this betrayal was more bittersweet than the first, and far more personal. Miek was a being who was at peace in times of war and at war during times of peace. He idolized the Hulk and saw his actions as the best way to bring him back to his true self, and then the Hulk’s true self leveled Manhattan.

As bizarre as it sounds, a good betrayal is a thing of beauty. It can take an old story device like the Hulk getting angry and smashing stuff and turn it into a character defining story arc. With two betrayals, Pak redefined the way I viewed the Hulk. If that’s not good writing, I don’t know what is.

-Brent

Ah, henchmen. The super villian’s version of the sidekick, henchmen are always right there to do the legwork, take the fall when things go wrong and receive about five times the beatings that their bosses do. Henchmen are glorified gofers, dupes and cannon fodder, all dressed up in thematically-appropriate costumes. They build and staff the lair, they drive the vehicles and they provide the cover for the head honcho’s eventual escape — they are the glue that holds the whole concept of super villainy together.

Number 21(the hefty one who dresses like Kevin Smith when out of uniform) and Number 24 (famously described by 21 as “Jerry Seinfeld with a unibrow”), aides to the mighty Monarch from The Venture Bros, are the gold standard of henchmen as far as I’m concerned. They’re comically inept and far more likely to sabotage the Monarch than to help him; 21 (real name Gary) wrote a scathing tell-all book about the Monarch that sent big king butterfly to his room in tears. Even when they do something correctly it backfires, as at the end of season one when they fulfill all of the Monarch’s orders and destroy the Cocoon, which the Monarch almost immediately regrets. Throughout the first three seasons of the show, the duo show us what henching would actually look like in the real world. They work long hours, they waste time arguing about whether Smurfs are mammals or not, they take unauthorized smoke breaks when the Monarch delivers lengthy monologues via radio, they have to run ghetto job fairs to attract new recruits and they display a meta-awareness of their own role in the superhero vs. super villain game; in season 3 episode The Lepidopterists, they assure a new guy that while they’re effectively indestructible because they always survive every mission no matter how stupidly they behave, he’s most certainly doomed because he’s the new guy. And yet — *SPOILER ALERT* — number 24 is tragically decapitated in the final episode of that season.

Of the two, I much prefer Number 21. He has an irrepressible goofiness, and he’s a huge comic book/pop culture dork. Not only did he once spend all of the Monarch’s money on what he mistakenly believed was a fully-operational lightsaber, his room in the Cocoon is home to what he calls his “armory,” which is remarkably similar to my own armory: a replica version of Anduril (Aragorn’s sword from Lord of the Rings), giant foam Hulk hands, Magneto’s helmet and other random superhero-branded junk you end up buying when you go to the toy store as an adult with a credit card. Throw in his periodic “wicked gas” problem, and Number 21 and I are practically the same person.

Yes. Practically the same person.

-Paul

Lately, it’s been a bit difficult coming up with ideas to write about for the blog. And I’d imagine that there may have been one other writer on the team who may have felt the same way, so when the opportunity arose to do a theme blog, I was more than happy to get on that. I was even excited about the theme, which I’m certain, some variation of the theme was brought up in a question that was asked on our Facebook page. Who’s your favorite Henchmen? Something like that. Anyway, when it came time to actually write about one, I blanked. I’ve found that the more competent villains have done away with having henchmen a long time ago. Also, I didn’t want to write about the mutant known as Toad. So I decided to default to the Transformers. But hey, I’m not being lazy about it. Usually, when the words “Henchmen” and “Transformers” are mentioned, everyone jumps to Starscream. And I don’t want to be that guy who writes the 500th article about Starscream this year, so I figured I’d write about his lesser known partners, Skywarp and Thundercracker.

So let’s start with Thundercracker. Being one of the first Decepticons to awaken on Earth, he was fortunate enough to claim an alternative Earth-mode of being a F-15 fighter jet, more specifically, a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. The same goes for Skywarp and their superior, Starscream. What’s interesting about Thundercracker, is that he wasn’t all that into his role as a Decepticon. Sure, he did bad things, but he was the kinda robot that would let things slide if it served a greater purpose in his eyes. For example, there was a time in the original cartoon where he “allowed” an Autobot to destroy an important Decepticon weapon, just so that Starscream would catch the blame for it. But that was mostly because Starscream is dick. But also, it would appear that in some of his comic iterations, Thundercracker doesn’t have anything against the humans that they often terrorize. There’s a bit of sympathy there, but you’d never know it.

And then there is Skywarp. Also a F-15, he was kind of the opposite of Thundercracker. It’s not like he was an insane murderer of humanity or anything… But he was more of the ideal kind of Decepticon. This is seen more so in the loyalty department. He’ll help out a buddy if he can. And that’s pretty cool. But at the same time, he’s kind of a suck-up… Not to Starscream, but to Megatron. Which never really sat well with Starscream. But what really makes Skywarp interesting, is that he can teleport. And in his expanded bio, it seems that he was a bit of a joker with his teleportation powers as well. So that’s pretty cool.

So that’s it for those guys. However, I’m not finished with the Transformers Henchmen. I have another set waiting for you (More Decepticons!) on the next entry. So look out for it. Soon. Real soon.

-Fleet

Recently the staff here at Star Clipper decided to do a series on our favorite villain sidekicks. The rationale behind it was that while there are plenty of good villains out there like Doctor Doom, the Joker, and Lex Luther, but there aren’t nearly as many good henchmen. And when I say henchmen, I don’t mean the meaningless cannon fodder like Doc Doom’s Doombots or those weird Puddy Soldiers from the old Power Rangers TV shows, but the stalwart partner that all villains used to have, the kind whose sole purpose was to make their leaders look more powerful by comparison and act as a punching bag when their plans inevitably failed.

When this idea first came up, I was shocked to realize how few good henchmen there were these days. It used to be a staple of a good villain to have a lackey at his beck and call, but much like spiky shoulder pads and death rays, they seem to slowly be falling out of the bad guy vocabulary.

The few still out there have developed into some pretty interesting characters though, able to stand apart from their masters but still doggedly loyal to them. The first example of this new breed of henchmen is Arkillo, from Geoff John’s creation, the Sinestro Corps. In many aspects, Arkillo is the perfect henchmen. He’s more muscle than mind, he’s completely devoted to his leader, and even though he’s suffered defeat after defeat, he still gets plenty of screen time as Sinestro’s right-hand man.

Arkillo was first introduced in Green Lantern as kind of a foil to Kilowog. He was instantly distinguished as a psychopath among psychopaths, capable of making the murderous masses of Sinestro’s army follow him without question. Then, a little later on, he further defined his image by going up against his green lantern counterpart, which more or less ended in a draw. I found that pretty impressive when you consider Kilowog’s reputation.

Then, during the Prelude to Blackest Night, when Sinestro had taken a leave of absence and Mongol decided to attempt a coo, Arkillo stepped up again and challenged Mongol in Sinestro’s name, something his Yellow (in both senses of the word) Corpsmen failed to do.

Admittedly, this fight ended less than well for Arkillo, leaving him minus a tongue, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. Plus, when Sinestro finally did return, the big boss actually greeted Arkillo by name. Was that worth the price of not being able to talk anymore? All I know is that Arkillo’s not complaining.

My second favorite henchman isn’t actually a man at all, but the (a)cutely insane Harley Quinn. It isn’t a twisted sense of honor that drives her, but rather an equally twisted love for the Joker. They say that love makes you crazy, but Harley brings that saying to a whole new level.

She started out her life as a psychiatrist of all things, until she made the extremely ill-fated decision to travel to Arkham Asylum to study the Joker. Now she spends her days wearing a skin tight black and red leotard while continually springing her boyfriend out of jail, something which he rarely feels inclined to do for her.

Still that doesn’t mean Harley is without her resources. In the past she’s fought her fair share of ridiculously one-sided fights (all in the name of love), and even teamed up with a few people aside from her beloved “Mr. J.” Heck, right now she’s co-starring in her own series with the femme fatale combo of Catwoman and Poison Ivy in Gotham City Sirens.

Say what you will about her choice in men (which is wayyyyy too much to cover in one blog), but she definitely knows how to hold her own as well as absorb a stupid amount of punishment. I doubt there’s any other way she could survive being around the Joker this long. Loyalty and durability are the two most important attributes a good lackey can have, and Harley shows them off in spades (or should that be diamonds?).

Clearly the career of a henchman is not one filled with benefits or many chances of advancement, so it makes sense that there are only a select few individuals that fit the job description. It leads me to think that the lower number of henchmen today doesn’t have anything to do with villains not wanting them, but rather that there are too few applicants compared to the number of open positions. Yet another job I wouldn’t want to have in a comic book universe.

-Brent

Rich Johnston over at www.BleedingCool.com threw out an interesting theory www.bleedingcool.com/2011/05/17/dc-looking-to-relaunch-everything-in-september/ last week that DC is going to renumber all of its books with number 1’s come September. He compiles all the slug lines from DC’s September solicitations to make a compelling case for his argument; if you read his research, you’ll notice a lot “final battles” and “everything changes,” even more so than usual in comic solicitations. Whether this is a complete do-over for the DC Universe or just a rollback of all odometers remains to be seen, but the buzz around the universe-altering nature of the Flashpoint story could imply that it’s the former.

My initial response to this was sound somewhere between “dry heave” and “mouth fart.” I vividly remember when Marvel jump-started its universe in the 90s, because at the time I was a hard-core Marvel fan. “Was” is the operative word, because that stunt drove me away from Marvel (and to a lesser extent, all mainstream comics) for more than a decade. I didn’t want to spend a year watching the FF get dosed with cosmic rays and meet Dr. Doom again, and the Avengers come together for the first time, and Peter Parker get his amazing spider-powers all over again, and the X-Men all tentatively work through their powers and early romances. It certainly didn’t help that Marvel gave the reins to the Image guys, because none of them could write their way out of a paper bag.

Some of my disdain was no doubt because I was born a crusty old guy who hates change, but there was definitely a sense that Marvel was spiting all us lifers in an effort to attract new readers. We knew these heroes and their origins — at that point, getting a fill-in issue where the hero reminisced about how they got their powers all those years ago and how their life has never been the same, etc, still happened about once a year in normal continuity — so the whole plan seemed unnecessary. Today, with most seminal moments for any title readily available in softcover reprint collections, a total do-over seems particularly unwarranted.

But I also recently read that Thor Saga freebie that Marvel gave away to promote the Odinson’s movie, and it was 22 uninterrupted pages of back story covering 30-something years of comics history. I lived through a lot of it as it happened, and even in condensed format it was just about impossible to keep everyone straight and make sense of it. There’s just too much to absorb. Is that what it’s like for a kid just coming to Thor for the first time? Maybe these characters have so much back story that it’s too daunting for a first time reader to even think about picking up a title. I don’t personally believe that, because I pick up new or unfamiliar books frequently, and I’m not trying to grasp the entire history of the title when I do so. I just want a good story, and one that draws me into the series. Eventually I’ll learn the back story, or I’ll watch new back story as it develops, and that’s fine for me. But maybe if I was a comic book executive who had marketing people telling me how great first issues do sales-wise and how a system-wide rebirth will generate a lot of publicity, I’d think differently about the appeal of a month of nothing but first issues.

And honestly, if DC really goes for either the complete re-start or just renumbers the books, there will be a heap of publicity and a spike in sales. If that’s all DC’s brass want from the stunt, they’ll deem it a success — probably a short-term success, but a success nonetheless. It may cost them a couple thousand readers (like me), but history has shown that I’ll eventually return, usually a few years after the company resumes the original numbering sequence.

It does make me think of a saying that’s attributed to Stan Lee when he was Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief but no longer writing all the core titles: “Every issue is somebody’s first issue of the book,” Stan purportedly reminded his writers and editors. Stan wanted his creative teams to make each issue exciting and accessible for old and new readers alike. Stan used to sell a lot of comic books on that theory, and Marvel didn’t have to fiddle with their numbering system while it was in effect.

-Paul